The Historical Zionist Case for Fascism

Over the past year, the Israel Lobby especially in the UK has mounted its high horse about the issue of comparing Zionism to Nazism. Calling any such comparison anti-Semitic, it has accepted as a given that the charge is a fabrication on the order of the Christian blood libel. Tony Greenstein, myself and others have countered that the comparison is indeed historically factual and accurate (though I’ve also warned that such comparisons must be made carefully, rather than as a bludgeon to equate Israel with Nazism).

Ken Livingstone, who offered a rather provocative version of the claim, got himself suspended from the UK Labour Party as a result. Similarly, Jackie Walker, a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn who is herself Jewish, was threatened with expulsion for correctly noting that Jews profited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Most recently, Moshe Machover, the founder of the Israeli anti-Zionist Party, Matzpen, found himself expelled from the Party for arguing along the same lines.

Luckily, I don’t belong to any Party that could or would expel me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m allergic to participating in membership or leadership roles in most organizations (and possibly why they’re averse to having me).

A Jewish studies graduate student earlier today pointed me to a fascinating study of pre-WWII Jabotinsky Zionism and its impact on latter-day Israeli politics. As most of you will know, Israel’s current extreme-rightist government is an ideological heir of Jabotinsky. Much of its garrison state militancy, hatred of Arabs, and urge for territorial aggrandizement stems from Jabotinskyean Zionism. Further, it’s adulation of the powerful strongman leader and its dog-whistle dalliance with outright fascist discourse all harken back to lessons learned from Jabotinsky.

“It has to be said fiercely and succinctly: we are fascists, Jewish fascists.” With these words, D. Stabiecki, a Revisionist living in Rome appealed to Polish Jews…to adopt the politics of Mussolini’s Italy…

The chief mission of the Revisionist movement, he argued, was to give birth to the fascist Jew. This new Jew would “glorify physical strength” and strive toward “the will to power”–the notion that, as Nietzsche put it, “life itself is essentially a process of appropriating, injuring, overpowering the alien and the weaker…”

The fascist Jew’s code of ethics would follow a simple formula: “[E]verything that serves the building of the Jewish state is good. Everything that damages the construction of the Jewish state is bad…” He argued the new fascist Jew would wage war against socialists and communists on the “Jewish street” and be “prepared to use all means to stop them, not excluding physical force.” He would proudly declare that the “democratic-liberal idea is not holy to us. If the realization of democratic thinking can lead to destroying the ideal of the Jewish state, we can also be anti-democratic.”

While it’s important to note that this romance between Zionist and European fascism flourished in the period before World War II, before news broke of the Holocaust and the Nazi extermination of much of European Jewry; it’s also worth keeping in mind that the Revisionists, in their effort to end British colonial rule, conducted serious negotiations with the Nazis well into the War itself. They even contemplated a Jewish state underpinned by much of the same ideology as the Nazis themselves.

Nor were the Revisionists the only Zionist party flirting with European fascism: Ben Gurion’s Labor movement signed the Haavara Agreement which facilitated the plundering of the wealth of German Jews by transferring it to Palestine in return for the purchase of military matériel for the Nazi war machine. Haavara also served a double benefit because it peeled away Diaspora Zionists from the international campaign led by American Jewry to boycott Nazi Germany.

Despite his fierce enmity toward the Revisionists, Ben Gurion’s views mirrored those of the Revisionists in some key ways. He too hated the Arabs and laid the groundwork for the later expulsion of over half the native Israeli Palestinian population in the Nakba. He too held cold-blooded views which declared the primacy of the state over all other Jewish values. The founder of the Israeli state harbored Messianic vision for himself as leader and for the state itself as a force for the ultimate historical redemption of the Jewish people.

This toxic romance with fascist ideals on both the Zionist left and right has led us to where we are now. It has led to an Israeli state which worships power and military might. A state which finds moral values and international law not just expendable, but inimical to the national interest. A state which upholds the supremacy of Jews over non-Jewish citizens.

The idea that Zionism has had a long historical flirtation with fascism that informs Israel today, is an idea that should not be controversial. The fact that is is in some circles illustrates how ahistorical the Israel Lobby and its adherents are.

“It has to be said fiercely and succinctly: we are fascists, Jewish fascists.” With these words, D. Stabiecki, a Revisionist living in Rome appealed to Polish Jews…to adopt the politics of Mussolini’s Italy…”

Richard said: ” He too hated the Arabs and laid the groundwork for the later expulsion of over half the native Israeli Palestinian population the Nakba.”

…the most important economic asset of the native population is the fellah..,the builders of the country, and it’s laborers…Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to the fellahs or worked by them…They must receive help from the Jewish institutions to free themselves from the dead weight of their oppressors [the effendis] and to keep their land”.–Teveth, Shabtai, Ben Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. Pg. 32.

BTW. Ben Gurion, and other early Zionists, were convinced that most of the Palestinian fellah were descended from Jews who’d been forced to convert to Islam. Ben Gurion reasoned that with Zionism’s success, more and more crypto-Jewish Arabs would gravitate to the Jewish settlements and assimilate.

I’m not feeling the hate.

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October 20, 2017 2:46 AM

Deïr Yassin

Other hasbaristas have posted this before you, that was in the twenties when Ben Gorion still thought that the Arabs might join the Zionists against the Brits, he later turned to the transfer option.
That Ben Gourion despised Arabs is no secret, it included Jews from Arab countries, the things he said about them is clearly racist (or antisemitic if you like).

@ Zionauts: Geez, guys, BG loved Arabs, don’t you know that? I’ve quoted here diary entries which explicitly show BG favored mass expulsion of recalcitrant Arabs. Look it up & stop bothering people asking for citations. You can find the citations yourself. If you can’t either you’re incompetent or you don’t want to.

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October 20, 2017 6:35 PM

Deïr Yassin

@ Argonauts
Why don’t you start by reading this article by Edo Konrad on the Israeli website +972mag: “The roots of anti-Mizrahi racism in Israel”. It includes quotes by Ben Gourion, and then read the book mentioned by Israeli historian Tom Segev, “The First Israelis”, you’ll find what you’re looking for …..https://972mag.com/the-roots-of-anti-mizrahi-racism-in-israel/114424/

@ Joe Horowitz: I don”t have a clue what connection you’re making. The fact is that the Revisionists loved the Nazis till they heard about mass murder and the Nazis loved Zionists till they realized ethnic cleansing wouldn’t work fast enough to rid them of their problem. As for BG, he didn’t like the Nazis but was more than willing to benefit from their policies which led to mass Jewish murder.

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October 20, 2017 6:38 PM

Joe Horowitz

Your last sentence logically means BG actions led to mass murder as if w/o him the holocaust would not have happened.

@ Joe Horowitz: Don’t tell me what my sentences mean & don’t paraphrase them. You don’t know what I mean. Either you can’t read or you refuse to understand what I write. I never said BG’s views led to mass murder. I said he exploited mass murder to pursue Zionist interests.

@Zionauts: On the contrary, Lehi put forward a plan to the Nazis declaring their intent to create a Zionist state akin to Nazi Germany in Palestine. You people are so bad at this:

In 1940, Lehi proposed intervening in the Second World War on the side of Nazi Germany to attain their help in expelling Britain from Mandate Palestine…[15] Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik was sent to Beirut where he met the German official Werner Otto von Hentig…

Stern also proposed recruiting some 40,000 Jews from occupied Europe to invade Palestine with German support to oust the British. On 11 January 1941, Vice Admiral Ralf von der Marwitz, the German Naval attaché in Turkey, filed a report (the “Ankara document”) conveying an offer by Lehi to “actively take part in the war on Germany’s side” in return for German support for “the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich.”

@ Argonaut: As in so many of these matters, context is all and you’ve omitted context. Ben Gurion was very happy to accept Arabs into his country as long as they were willing to subordinate themselves to the Zionists & accept their subordinate role. But once an Arab resisted or demanded equal rights, that Arab was a dead Arab as far as Ben Gurion was concerned. So yes, you can find all sorts of fine rhetoric in Ben Gurion’s diaries. But you will also find the passages you’ve conveniently omitted which make clear that if these Arabs don’t like us, then we’ll get rid of them en masse. Which is of course what he did.

So you have both written evidence & actual historical events which document Ben Gurion’s beliefs and acts concerning Arabs. THen you have a few high-minded phrases he added just so people like you could come along and say what a fine fellow BG was. I’ll give you this, he was a shrewd, wily pol. He knew he would be judged by history. That’s why he was smart enough not to put Plan Dalet into writing with his own signature to it. He didn’t want to end up in Nuremberg like those Nazis did.

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October 20, 2017 6:28 PM

Argonauts

No. Mr Silverstein. It is your comments that lack context when you make it seem as if Ben-Gurion simply said under all circumstances, the Arabs will be expelled. This was not the case.

This is the full quote:

“Let us assume that the Negev will not be allotted to the Jewish state. In such event,
the Negev will remain barren because the Arabs have neither the competence nor
the need to develop it or make it prosper. They already have an abundance of
deserts but not of manpower, financial resources, or creative initiative. It is very
probable that they will agree that we undertake the development of the Negev and
make it prosper in return for our financial, military, organizational, and scientific
assistance. It is also possible that they will not agree. People don’t always behave
according to logic, common sense, or their own practical advantage. Just as you
yourself are sometimes split conflicted between your mind and your emotions, it is
possible that the Arabs will follow the dictates of sterile nationalist emotions and
tell us: “We want neither your honey nor your sting. We’d rather that the Negev
remain barren than that Jews should inhabit it.” If this occurs, we will have to talk
to them in a different language—and we will have a different language—but such a
language will not be ours without a state. This is so because we can no longer
tolerate that vast territories capable of absorbing tens of thousands of Jews should
remain vacant, and that Jews cannot return to their homeland because the Arabs
prefer that the place [the Negev] remains neither ours nor theirs. We must expel
Arabs and take their place. Up to now, all our aspirations have been based on an
assumption – one that has been vindicated throughout our activities in the country
– that there is enough room in the land for the Arabs and ourselves. But if we are
compelled to use force – not in order to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev or
Transjordan, but in order to guarantee our right to settle there – our force will
enable us to do so.”

So even in this translation, Ben-Gurion talks of expulsion of some Negev Arabs that insist on denying Jews the right to settle in the land, even if that land is uninhabited.

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October 20, 2017 11:15 PM

Elisabeth

I find it a convoluted piece of writing in which he is unclear and contradicts himself several times. On the one hand, he claims the Negev is vacant, while at the same time he says the Arabs there must be expelled, and Jews must take their place if they do not want Jews to settle there. So it is NOT vacant.
Even though he has just said that Arabs that oppose Jewish settlement must be expelled, he then goes on to say that he does NOT intend to dispossess them. So what is it? Is he incapable of making up his mind, or is his writing style always like this?
Anyway, it is clear that he looked down on Arabs (as in “they lack creative initiative and competence”).

Is the Negev a big lush garden now? Or is it still a desert, despite all the Jewish creative initiative and competence?

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October 21, 2017 3:35 AM

Argonauts

@Elisabeth

Ben Gurion is referring to the nomadic Bedouin who used to move freely between TransJordan and the Negev. He is saying that these transient Bedouin cannot claim land that they cannot or will not develop.

The Palestine Potash Company is an example of a Zionist enterprise in the Negev that the Bedouin did not develop.

And BTW. The word ‘expel’ is an English translation. I believe the actual Hebrew word that BG used was ‘push away’.

And to add to your confusion, the phrase, “We must expel (push away) Arabs and take their place”, doesn’t appear in the handwritten letter BG wrote to his son, Amos. Someone blotted a word and added “not”.
So, the handwritten version actually reads, “We must not expel (push away) Arabs and take their place”.

So in this intimate correspondence with his son, BG, composed in the midst of the violent Arab Revolt of the late 1930’s, BG does not evince any trace of malice, much less hate.

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October 21, 2017 7:10 AM

Elisabeth

“He is saying that these transient Bedouin cannot claim land that they cannot or will not develop.”

Do you agree with that? (‘Expell’ and ‘push away’ seems to be ‘the same difference’ to me, by the way.)

The American Indians were expelled from most of the US territory for the same ‘reasons’. (‘If you do not farm the land, you have no right to it’.)

Do you agree with that?

Apart from anything, some land is just more suited for extensive pastoral use, and other land is more suited for intensive agricultural use. If people use the land in a way that has proven suitable over the centuries, and other people think they know better, do they have the right to throw them out?

What do you think of that?

Ben Gurion does express the disdain towards indigenous populations and their use of the land that is typical of the colonial period. If he did write that the Arabs were not to be expelled I am glad. (But it did happen nevertheless, and what are words compared to deeds in the end…)

There are some questions that interest me, and that are not directly related to the morality of the treatment of indigenous populations in the colonial period:

1 I am interested to know what the percentage of the Negev territory is, that Israel has managed to use for agriculture, compared to the percentage that the Arabs/ Bedouin/indigenous population (whatever term suits you best) was using for agriculture.

2 How successful has agriculture proven to be in the Negev in the long term? Does it have detrimental consequences for the environment at large, for instance because it detracts too much water from other areas, and so on?

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October 21, 2017 2:15 PM

Argonauts

First, I question your use of the word ‘indigenous’. The Jews have a stronger claim to being indigenous to the region than the Negev Bedouin have to being indigenous to the Negev. But that is for another day.

I mentioned the Palestine Potash Company, but I will add that the Negev now has cement factories as well and now has tourism.

Ben Gurion settled in a Northern Negev kibbutz, and he and his wife are buried there. Like it or not the Negev is used by the military as well. Beersheva is a large, thriving city. The Lahav Forest is growing exponentially, fixing the soil, and preventing desertification.
When the Egyptian Army invaded in 1948, it became bogged down trying to capture the Zionist kibbutzim of the Northern Negev, and consequently, Tel Aviv was spared.’push

The Bedouin of Ben Gurion’s (Ottoman) day were not romantic, pastoral wanderers. They were practiced brigands who preyed on sedentary Palestinian Arabs and townspeople. The Negev Bedouin kept and traded African slaves until 1948. To this day, they practice a rigid heirarchy that resembles Apartheid and/or the Indian caste system.
The last Bedouin clan recently relented and gave up clitoris removal.

The Negev Bedouin have had their day in court. Their claims of indigenous rights and claims of possession based on Ottoman law, have been dismissed. Their lawyers and testimonies failed to sway the Court.

Again. Ben Gurion only wished to push away those Bedouin who were making unreasonable land claims and interfering with settlments in the Negev.

Later, during the civil war that had engulfed Palestine, many Palestinian Arabs and Bedouin tribes were expelled.

@ Argonauts: I didn’t say the Jews don’t have a claim to being indigenous. Yes, about 40,000 Jews who lived in Palestine before 1890 (the first Aliyah) do have that claim. Those Jews have lived in Palestine for generations and many could trace their lineage there back centuries or more. And their direct descendants have a similar claim. And the overwhelmingly larger Palestinian population living there then have a legitimate claim to be indigenous as do their descendants.

But do you or I or any of the other Jews who came from Europe after that period have such a claim? No way. Nor does a book give anyone the right to make such a claim. God is not a landlord and he doesn’t give deeds to Zionists legalizing their theft of the land of others.

In saying all this, I’m not saying non-indigenous Israelis should be expelled from Israel. But I am saying that they do not have an equal or superior claim to indigenous Palestinians. That is a false claim made by propagandists like you.

All your blather about the current status of the Negev doesn’t obviate the fact that it remains relatively thinly inhabited. That’s why the Likud is ethnically cleansing the Bedouin there to Judaize the region with new colonial settlements, just like the West Bank.

The Bedouin of Ben Gurion’s (Ottoman) day were not romantic, pastoral wanderers. They were practiced brigands

That is racist. The next racist comment from your mouth gets you banned. Take me very seriously.

To this day, they practice a rigid heirarchy that resembles Apartheid and/or the Indian caste system.

Now you’re a sociologist! Wow. And an expert on Bedouin society & culture. Where’d you earn that degree?

The Negev Bedouin have had their day in court.

I don’t give a damn what you claim about having their day in court. A “day” in an Israeli court is like a day in a court in Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany or Xi Jing’s China. It’s a kangaroo racist legal system meant to approve Israeli thievery. As such its rulings are invalid and unjust. No Bedouin need respect them, nor do they.

You are done in this comment thread. Do not publish another comment here.

@ Zionauts: I don’t care what you “believe” BG wrote. If you don’t bring the actual document with the actual Hebrew wording then your words have no value. If you mean the word “dahaf” it can mean both push away or expel. In this case, he clearly meant expel. You don’t “push away” thousands of Bedouin living throughout the Negev. Where would you push them away to? Of course, you’d expel them, which is precisely what he did in 48.

Nor do I care about your red herring about the cross-out. His intent is clear from the context of the passage. He didn’t write & didn’t believe in not expelling Arabs. He believed in expelling them. It would’ve been very easy for BG or anyone who had access to his original diary, realizing the import of that sentence, to add the “not” to that passage. It would be easy to determine this forensically by examining the ink used both in the original diary entry and the ink used to add the word “not.” If they are precisely the same, then it’s possible BG added the word. THough he still may’ve done so after realizing he’d written a highly incriminating statement.

@ Zionauts: Be careful what you claim I write or say. Be very careful. And don’t paraphrase my views. If you don’t summarize them correctly I will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

I never said Ben Gurion explicitly said he would expel all the “Arabs” from Palestine. But he didn’t have to. He placed a pile of breadcrumbs throughout his public statements and diaries that enable us to understand his thinking. He was a deft politician & understood how bad it would look if he explicitly stated his views. So he hedged & sidled up to things. But based on the statements he made & based on policies Israel pursued during Nakba, we know what he believed & what he DID.

He expelled over half the indigenous Palestinian population of Palestine. That speaks louder than anything he said or did.

As for Ben Gurion’s discussion of the Negev, he used that area because it was clear to most people that it was very thinly settled. It remains relatively thinly settled to this day, which is why Israel is expelling the indigenous Bedouin inhabitants and replacing them with Judaizing settlements. Ben Gurion conveniently neglected to speak of areas of Palestine which were densely populated with Palestinian inhabitants. What would he do if THEY resisted Zionist domination in the new state? Of course they would be expelled. And that’s indeed what happened.

So please spare us the hermeneutics and counting angels dancing on the head of a pin. We know Ben Gurion wrote, we know what he did. That’s all that mattered.

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